Forbes magazine, (Forbes, March 2, 2015) recently gushed in its "29th Annual World Billionaires Issue" that the world has as of 2015 almost two thousand individuals who are multi-billionaires. The editors of Forbes estimate that these "magnificent two thousand" have a combined wealth of somewhat over $ 7 trillion dollars. The average world billionaire in the group this year had a net worth of about $4 billion dollars. Bill Gates, with about $80 billion, was still number one on the list, as he has been for the last sixteen years. Sagacious, curmudgeonly investor Warren Buffett with $73 billion ranked third.
The USA, center of world banking and investment, big military hardware, energy exploitation and technology has the most billionaires, 536 of them. The cumulative wealth of the 500 plus USA billionaires is estimated to be a bit over $2 trillion dollars. That amount is about 1/8 of the total U.S. 2015 GDP. It is astounding that just 500 or so individuals have skimmed off about 12.5% of all the money made or earned in our nation.
These individuals do not put much of their lucre into circulation. How could they? There are so few of them. Even if they went on a crazy spending binge the 536 American billionaires just could not realistically pump a significant amount of their accumulated wealth into the general economy. Furthermore, such activities would be the most unlikely thoughts in their minds. Their main concern, their laser like focus, is not wealth redistribution, far from it...it is further accumulation of wealth. They have more than anyone but only want more of the stuff. They care little on how their money circulates.
The "magnificent 536" have, thus, in effect, sequestered their "geld" outside of the general economy. The question of where their funds lie and how they are invested is not the focus of this essay. Sufficient to say, that the vast sums they control are mostly out of general circulation. They do not buy cars and trucks in the millions, refrigerators, clothes, shoes and all the vast array of products and services our nation provides. Hey they are only a few mostly men who you could gather in a small school auditorium. Their wealth is mostly hidden away in off shore accounts, foreign investments, exotic holdings, "priceless" artwork, vast real estate, enormous yachts, rare antiques and antiquities, etc. etc. (Some like the generous Bill Gates do make an effort at doing good deeds and he also promises to give it all away when he dies.)
The economic effect of their accumulation of excessive wealth is that their piles of currency are out of circulation, leaving all the rest of us, poor folk, workers, brick layers, plumbers, ordinary millionaires, the filthy rich, the exceedingly affluent, the simply affluent, movie moguls, Presidents, CEOs, bankers, Supreme Court judges, physicians, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers with only 9/10 of the nation's wealth to compete for. Aside from the 500, the other three-hundred plus million citizens of the USA scramble to access only 90 cents on every dollar...that makes life ten percent harder on us all. Now if only the government would tax these 500 a bit more........
So all you just filthy rich, exceedingly rich, those of you rolling in it, and the just plain wealthy folk, and others of your ilk, don't feel so smug when the conversation turns to wealth inequality. The five hundred "magnificent billionaires" have reached into your pockets too and removed ten cents on every dollar that jingle in there for their own (perhaps not so good) purposes. That is the impact of wealth inequality....that is money you too can not access.
For those of the middle class the picture is even more bleak. The topic of wealth inequality is not thought of much in this group. But it should be. Not only have the magnificent 500 picked your pockets for ten cents on every dollar, but the top 20% have picked off another 70 cents on every dollar. So that you middle class workers, bricklayers, plumbers, carpenters, truck drivers, machine operators, teachers,factory workers and others are competing for only twenty cents on every dollar. The top one fifth of the wealthy have siphoned off 80 cents on every dollar, leaving only 20 cents on each dollar for the lower 80 percent of the population to compete for. Perhaps that is why life has become so much more difficult for the American worker.
That does not seem like the American Dream, does it? Nor is it very likely...no it is unlikely, that either you in the lower 80% of wealth distribution or your children or your children's children would ever move up into the top rungs of wealth. Those places are all sewed up for the progeny of the elites. That is because wealth brings with it both priveledge, economic power, and political power. The wealthy control the politicians and the policies of this nation.
The sad fact is that the sequestering of wealth in the hands of the few is not good for our economy. Wealth inequality is a form of austerity, which limits the amount of money in the hands of the people. It is analogous to stuffing a hank of cloth into the carburetor air intake of a gasoline engine, it stalls the engine, it staunches economic growth. For that reason it is not good for our nation, and its people, rich and poor, or for a flourishing economy.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Sunday, June 7, 2015
NOT GLOBAL WARMING --"WEATHER INTENSIFICATION"
NOT "GLOBAL WARMING",
LET'S CALL IT "WEATHER INTENSIFICATION"
HUMAN INDUCED GLOBAL WEATHER INTENSIFICATION OR "HIGWI"
My mother-in-law is a Fox News addict. That "news" station is her primary portal to the world from her isolated perch on the lower flanks of Bromley Mountain, here in Peru Vermont. A secondary portal is the view from her kitchen window. Down below she can see Stratton Mountain, the valley and Route 11 snaking across the countryside with its seasonal traffic. She also keeps a keen eye on her woodpile, located just beyond her kitchen door. This last winter has been called an "old-time Vermont winter" by the locals. In the Greens past events are often obscured by mists of both the meteorological and mental kind. The "old days" are often the only yardstick by which the present is gauged. But by any measure this winter was truly unusual. The snows came heavy and often, and Momma Schmidt's neatly stacked woodpile came perilously close to being used up well before the spring thaws and warm weather arrived.
The weather is a common topic up here. But one must keep mum about global warming. Whenever I use that phrase to explain the underlying cause of my mother-in-law's winter discomfort, this feisty elder woman responds with a harangue about university types "who don't know what's going on in the "real world" and have their "bald" pointy heads buried in arcane data "which don't mean a thing". I find a lot of similarity in tone and key phrases between her responses and the talking points dialog on Fox News. But the facts of a cold and snowy season are hard to dispute when she clasps my ear between her bony thumb and forefinger and drags me over to the window to view that empty place in the snow where her woodpile used to be. "Where's the warming, huh sonny?" she would cackle in my ear. With the mercury hovering just above zero, it is a difficult task explaining global warming to a cranky old lady. After all my efforts she could not or would not understand the term "global warming". Her "pals" on Hannity and Fox News were no help in this matter either.
One day riding down the bumpy, potholed dirt road from her place,after a visit to mend a frozen pipe, I thought about her and the host of other U.S. citizens who can not or will not understand the grave climate threat we face. One jarring bump in the road rattled the ancient frame of my pickup and must have had a similar effect on a bundle of cranial neurons because the word "intensification" suddenly popped into my head. I thought, global "warming" is a terrible misnomer which leads some people to an erroneous concept---. We should rather be talking about 'global weather intensification',I mumbled to myself. So I coined a new term. I have abandoned global warming and now refer only to "Human Induced Global Weather INTENSIFICATION". My hope is people like Mamma Schmidt might grasp the concept better.
Reaching the well-maintained, smooth asphalt surface of Route 11, I began to think more clearly about how I could expand on my pothole induced brain storm and win over Momma Schmidt (or if not her, some of the other die hard climate deniers in this part of the nation).
So here it is. To understand this we need a few facts. Let's establish first that there is little question about the underlying climate data. Greenhouse gases have been,since the industrial revolution, increasing steadily in the atmosphere and as they accumulate atmospheric temperatures have been rising almost steadily. No question about it. The atmosphere is getting hotter. But how do you relate that fact to the doubters when we experience more snow, cold snaps and other weather phenomena which do not seem to be relatable to higher temperatures?
"Understand first that the earth is a sphere. Oh well not exactly a sphere but close enough anyway (a slightly flattened (or oblate) sphere-like body (or oblate spheroid)). When heated by the sun, it is the earth's equatorial belt which gets the most direct radiation and therefore becomes hotter than the sloping mid latitudes and the polar regions. This unequal heat is transferred to the overlying atmosphere and causes the fluid atmosphere to respond by moving to disperse the heat to achieve a more equitable distribution. This process of spreading heat from the equator over the globe's atmosphere is the phenomena we call weather. Weather is the means by which the excess heat of the equatorial zones is spread both north and south. The atmosphere's cloudy vortices or mid-latitude storms and tropical storms are the manifestation of this process. It is the unequal heat distribution which cause masses of air to have different temperatures, and pressures. The wind, clouds, rain, snow, hail sleet, etcetera, etcetera are only different ways of disseminating the excess heat from the equator. (The effects of these weather phenomena over longer periods are termed "climate". ) The more excess heat, the more of these weather phenomena we should expect and the more intense they should be. What we are saying is that it is the poorly distributed heat which causes weather...rain, snow, wind etc., thus more heat, a hotter globe will produce more of these phenomena, more rain, more snow, more weather. A hotter planet will generate more weather and more intense weather.
To transfer heat, the atmosphere moves air from warmer places to cooler places, just as air may circulate in your home. In the atmosphere we call these movements wind. But even more significantly this same atmosphere can also move heat around by evaporating and condensing water. Water is found on earth as a liquid, solid and gas and as it changes from one phase to another it can carry heat from the hotter equator to the cooler poles. Enormous amounts of heat are absorbed when equatorial sea water at the ocean surface is evaporated. That heat enters the atmosphere as a gas. That solar derived heat is carried by gaseous water molecules in the circulating atmosphere into the northern and southern hemispheres where the air cools and condenses into droplets to form clouds. As the water vapor changes from a gas into a liquid it releases heat it had stored over the tropics. The droplets form clouds which are warmer than the surrounding air as a result of the released heat. Clouds when cooled further can produce snow sleet and hail and in changing to ice release even more heat. So the weather phenomena that we see each day are simply the earth's means of transferring heat energy from the equator toward the poles. More heat, from a hotter earth would mean a greater need for heat transfer, and result in more rain, snow, sleet, hail and winds. A hotter earth will have more "weather" more rain, snow, more hot days, more windy days, more tornadoes, more droughts, more flooda, more hurricanes, more snow up up in the Greens and everywhere more intense weather.
Yes Momma Schmidt, what the scientists call "global warming" and I am here now calling GLOBAL WEATHER INTENSIFICATION can and may cause more snow, cold snaps, deeper drifts, stronger winds, more rain, more flooding, more frequent and more intense tropical storms, more and stronger tornadoes, or simply put..MORE INTENSE WEATHER . So please let's abandon the term "global warming" and use "global weather intensification" it's much more descriptive and valid.
Though she claims she doesn't know it or will not admit it, Momma Schmidt IS doing her part to reduce Human Induced Global Weather Intensification, or HIGWI. It is well known that she still burns only local wood in her Big Bear wood stove to heat her place. She is not adding any fossil CO2 to the atmosphere for heating. Back in 2005 she had solar panels installed on her roof to lower her electricity bill and those panels work fine. She uses very little gasoline since she hardly drives that 1998 caddy Coupe D'ville kept in her dilapidated garage. She carefully covers the front hood with a tarp on real cold winter days. I tried to explain to her that it has no effect...but you go try and tell her. The caddy goes to Manchester a few times a month and back! that's all. So that's how it goes up here in Vermont. Some progress being made.
Now if we could only get some of the dunderheads up here to rethink the excellent plan (sadly rejected a few years ago by the townsfolk) to put a string of electric generating wind turbines along the ridge of Gleib Mountain. Believe it or not they objected to the "visual impact". What further damage could be done to old Gleib, I don't know. It is a mountain horribly scarred and carved up by ski trails and ski lift structures. I guess no one up here sees those features as ugly anymore. People would soon get to look fondly on wind mill turbines too. The lowered electric bills would make folks forget any visual impact and put a broad smile on any Vermonter's face.
LET'S CALL IT "WEATHER INTENSIFICATION"
HUMAN INDUCED GLOBAL WEATHER INTENSIFICATION OR "HIGWI"
My mother-in-law is a Fox News addict. That "news" station is her primary portal to the world from her isolated perch on the lower flanks of Bromley Mountain, here in Peru Vermont. A secondary portal is the view from her kitchen window. Down below she can see Stratton Mountain, the valley and Route 11 snaking across the countryside with its seasonal traffic. She also keeps a keen eye on her woodpile, located just beyond her kitchen door. This last winter has been called an "old-time Vermont winter" by the locals. In the Greens past events are often obscured by mists of both the meteorological and mental kind. The "old days" are often the only yardstick by which the present is gauged. But by any measure this winter was truly unusual. The snows came heavy and often, and Momma Schmidt's neatly stacked woodpile came perilously close to being used up well before the spring thaws and warm weather arrived.
The weather is a common topic up here. But one must keep mum about global warming. Whenever I use that phrase to explain the underlying cause of my mother-in-law's winter discomfort, this feisty elder woman responds with a harangue about university types "who don't know what's going on in the "real world" and have their "bald" pointy heads buried in arcane data "which don't mean a thing". I find a lot of similarity in tone and key phrases between her responses and the talking points dialog on Fox News. But the facts of a cold and snowy season are hard to dispute when she clasps my ear between her bony thumb and forefinger and drags me over to the window to view that empty place in the snow where her woodpile used to be. "Where's the warming, huh sonny?" she would cackle in my ear. With the mercury hovering just above zero, it is a difficult task explaining global warming to a cranky old lady. After all my efforts she could not or would not understand the term "global warming". Her "pals" on Hannity and Fox News were no help in this matter either.
One day riding down the bumpy, potholed dirt road from her place,after a visit to mend a frozen pipe, I thought about her and the host of other U.S. citizens who can not or will not understand the grave climate threat we face. One jarring bump in the road rattled the ancient frame of my pickup and must have had a similar effect on a bundle of cranial neurons because the word "intensification" suddenly popped into my head. I thought, global "warming" is a terrible misnomer which leads some people to an erroneous concept---. We should rather be talking about 'global weather intensification',I mumbled to myself. So I coined a new term. I have abandoned global warming and now refer only to "Human Induced Global Weather INTENSIFICATION". My hope is people like Mamma Schmidt might grasp the concept better.
Reaching the well-maintained, smooth asphalt surface of Route 11, I began to think more clearly about how I could expand on my pothole induced brain storm and win over Momma Schmidt (or if not her, some of the other die hard climate deniers in this part of the nation).
So here it is. To understand this we need a few facts. Let's establish first that there is little question about the underlying climate data. Greenhouse gases have been,since the industrial revolution, increasing steadily in the atmosphere and as they accumulate atmospheric temperatures have been rising almost steadily. No question about it. The atmosphere is getting hotter. But how do you relate that fact to the doubters when we experience more snow, cold snaps and other weather phenomena which do not seem to be relatable to higher temperatures?
"Understand first that the earth is a sphere. Oh well not exactly a sphere but close enough anyway (a slightly flattened (or oblate) sphere-like body (or oblate spheroid)). When heated by the sun, it is the earth's equatorial belt which gets the most direct radiation and therefore becomes hotter than the sloping mid latitudes and the polar regions. This unequal heat is transferred to the overlying atmosphere and causes the fluid atmosphere to respond by moving to disperse the heat to achieve a more equitable distribution. This process of spreading heat from the equator over the globe's atmosphere is the phenomena we call weather. Weather is the means by which the excess heat of the equatorial zones is spread both north and south. The atmosphere's cloudy vortices or mid-latitude storms and tropical storms are the manifestation of this process. It is the unequal heat distribution which cause masses of air to have different temperatures, and pressures. The wind, clouds, rain, snow, hail sleet, etcetera, etcetera are only different ways of disseminating the excess heat from the equator. (The effects of these weather phenomena over longer periods are termed "climate". ) The more excess heat, the more of these weather phenomena we should expect and the more intense they should be. What we are saying is that it is the poorly distributed heat which causes weather...rain, snow, wind etc., thus more heat, a hotter globe will produce more of these phenomena, more rain, more snow, more weather. A hotter planet will generate more weather and more intense weather.
To transfer heat, the atmosphere moves air from warmer places to cooler places, just as air may circulate in your home. In the atmosphere we call these movements wind. But even more significantly this same atmosphere can also move heat around by evaporating and condensing water. Water is found on earth as a liquid, solid and gas and as it changes from one phase to another it can carry heat from the hotter equator to the cooler poles. Enormous amounts of heat are absorbed when equatorial sea water at the ocean surface is evaporated. That heat enters the atmosphere as a gas. That solar derived heat is carried by gaseous water molecules in the circulating atmosphere into the northern and southern hemispheres where the air cools and condenses into droplets to form clouds. As the water vapor changes from a gas into a liquid it releases heat it had stored over the tropics. The droplets form clouds which are warmer than the surrounding air as a result of the released heat. Clouds when cooled further can produce snow sleet and hail and in changing to ice release even more heat. So the weather phenomena that we see each day are simply the earth's means of transferring heat energy from the equator toward the poles. More heat, from a hotter earth would mean a greater need for heat transfer, and result in more rain, snow, sleet, hail and winds. A hotter earth will have more "weather" more rain, snow, more hot days, more windy days, more tornadoes, more droughts, more flooda, more hurricanes, more snow up up in the Greens and everywhere more intense weather.
Yes Momma Schmidt, what the scientists call "global warming" and I am here now calling GLOBAL WEATHER INTENSIFICATION can and may cause more snow, cold snaps, deeper drifts, stronger winds, more rain, more flooding, more frequent and more intense tropical storms, more and stronger tornadoes, or simply put..MORE INTENSE WEATHER . So please let's abandon the term "global warming" and use "global weather intensification" it's much more descriptive and valid.
Though she claims she doesn't know it or will not admit it, Momma Schmidt IS doing her part to reduce Human Induced Global Weather Intensification, or HIGWI. It is well known that she still burns only local wood in her Big Bear wood stove to heat her place. She is not adding any fossil CO2 to the atmosphere for heating. Back in 2005 she had solar panels installed on her roof to lower her electricity bill and those panels work fine. She uses very little gasoline since she hardly drives that 1998 caddy Coupe D'ville kept in her dilapidated garage. She carefully covers the front hood with a tarp on real cold winter days. I tried to explain to her that it has no effect...but you go try and tell her. The caddy goes to Manchester a few times a month and back! that's all. So that's how it goes up here in Vermont. Some progress being made.
Now if we could only get some of the dunderheads up here to rethink the excellent plan (sadly rejected a few years ago by the townsfolk) to put a string of electric generating wind turbines along the ridge of Gleib Mountain. Believe it or not they objected to the "visual impact". What further damage could be done to old Gleib, I don't know. It is a mountain horribly scarred and carved up by ski trails and ski lift structures. I guess no one up here sees those features as ugly anymore. People would soon get to look fondly on wind mill turbines too. The lowered electric bills would make folks forget any visual impact and put a broad smile on any Vermonter's face.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
WOW JEB BUSH AWFUL CANDIDATE ...WHAT MS COLLINS. MISSED
WOW JEB BUSH IS AWFUL...WHAT GAIL COLLINS LEFT OUT
In an opinion piece published in the NYT by Gail Collins on May 14, 2015, "Wow Jeb Bush is Awful," Ms Collins rightfully skewers Jeb Bush as an "awful" candidate. She listed his recent fumbles and stumbles. She goes on to bewail the fact that concerned voting citizens who were rightly repelled by some of the other GOP hopefuls and hoped for Bush as an alternate might have no other choice but to vote for one of these even more repulsive candidate. She does not name these candidates but her list of their major faux pas makes clear who they are. She is right on this score. I was pleased to read the piece, agreeing whole heartedly with her conclusions. But coming to the end I was left disappointed and dispirited, like a professor reading a blue paper final test and finding the student did not answer the last and crucial part of the question.
What Gail left out was the frightening similarity we are faced with as a nation with "awful" candidates on BOTH sides of the political spectrum. The only (so far) viable, candidate on the left is even more "awful". Ms. Collins fails her "final" by not even bothering to mention the barrage of poisonous revelations about Ms Clinton and her "Foundation". Revelations which should make a voter pinch their nose and turn away.
Ms Collins did not bother to characterize the candidate on the left. Perhaps the task was too daunting. Recent revelations about candidate Clinton would have gone well beyond the limits of her 1000 word column. So let me just finish her "blue book" for her.
The blunders, faux pas and illegalities of Mrs. Clinton revealed since she finally "admitted" to her candidacy are legion. Her suspicious and off-the-legal-spectrum use of a personal email server as Secretary of State , her personally editing her emails ( then wiping clean the server) before passing them on to the Administration, the probes of shady dealing of the Clinton Foundation, and headlines from all stripes of the political spectrum were a battering that Ms Collins ignores. A few examples of news while Ms Collins was writing her piece:° Britebart News, May 7, 2015, "Revealed Four Clinton Foundation Trustees Charged or Convicted...", USA Today, "Man this Clinton Foundation Seems Shady", May 5, 2015; "The Soft Corruption of Clinton Inc." Huffington Post, May 5, 2015, and many many more like that.
But most damaging and which should certainly eliminate the Democrat candidate from consideration is the revelations published yesterday by International Business Times, (IBT) "Clinton Foundation Donors Got Weapons Deals From Hillary" May 26, 2015. (This last piece of news of course post dated Ms Collins Op Ed piece.)
IBT staff writers David Sirota and Andrew Prez document the fact that under Hillary Clinton the State Department approved $165 billion dollars worth of arms sales to 20 nations whose governments had given millions to the Clinton Foundation. They characterize the case of the arms deals to Saudi Arabia as: "this one was enormous." During Clinton's term, "a consortium of American defense contractors led by Boeing would deliver $29 billion worth of advanced fighter jets" to SA. The IBT authors report that, though the State Department had documented "concerns" over the sale, in late 2011 staff at State Department revealed that the deal was "a personal top priority" for Secretary of State Clinton. The author's note that it was well documented that the Saudi family had contributed at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation just prior to Hillary assuming control over the State Department and then, just two months before the jet sale deal was finalized, Boeing, the manufacturer of the planes contributed $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation. The authors delved further to discover that under Clinton's leadership the State Department approved $165 billion dollars in commercial arms sales to 20 nations the government's of which also gave money to the Clinton Foundation. An interesting and seeming incriminating fact is that during the three year tenure of Clinton at State the value of arms sales to those countries was nearly double the amount approved by the State Department during the same period of George Bush's second term.
Thus Ms Collins' "blue book" might have ended with the conclusion that our nation is faced with a terrible dilemma..on one hand a group of radical ideologues too far to the right for the mass of American voter, and a self proclaimed "populist" centrist who has so much baggage, and evidence of "soft"corruption to make the outlook for her presidency a horror of constant investigations and gridlock that she can not be seriously considered for the post.
Perhaps Ms Collins might have also asked..."how did we get our nation to such a juncture?" And how can we possibly extricate ourselves from looming political and electoral disaster?
In an opinion piece published in the NYT by Gail Collins on May 14, 2015, "Wow Jeb Bush is Awful," Ms Collins rightfully skewers Jeb Bush as an "awful" candidate. She listed his recent fumbles and stumbles. She goes on to bewail the fact that concerned voting citizens who were rightly repelled by some of the other GOP hopefuls and hoped for Bush as an alternate might have no other choice but to vote for one of these even more repulsive candidate. She does not name these candidates but her list of their major faux pas makes clear who they are. She is right on this score. I was pleased to read the piece, agreeing whole heartedly with her conclusions. But coming to the end I was left disappointed and dispirited, like a professor reading a blue paper final test and finding the student did not answer the last and crucial part of the question.
What Gail left out was the frightening similarity we are faced with as a nation with "awful" candidates on BOTH sides of the political spectrum. The only (so far) viable, candidate on the left is even more "awful". Ms. Collins fails her "final" by not even bothering to mention the barrage of poisonous revelations about Ms Clinton and her "Foundation". Revelations which should make a voter pinch their nose and turn away.
Ms Collins did not bother to characterize the candidate on the left. Perhaps the task was too daunting. Recent revelations about candidate Clinton would have gone well beyond the limits of her 1000 word column. So let me just finish her "blue book" for her.
The blunders, faux pas and illegalities of Mrs. Clinton revealed since she finally "admitted" to her candidacy are legion. Her suspicious and off-the-legal-spectrum use of a personal email server as Secretary of State , her personally editing her emails ( then wiping clean the server) before passing them on to the Administration, the probes of shady dealing of the Clinton Foundation, and headlines from all stripes of the political spectrum were a battering that Ms Collins ignores. A few examples of news while Ms Collins was writing her piece:° Britebart News, May 7, 2015, "Revealed Four Clinton Foundation Trustees Charged or Convicted...", USA Today, "Man this Clinton Foundation Seems Shady", May 5, 2015; "The Soft Corruption of Clinton Inc." Huffington Post, May 5, 2015, and many many more like that.
But most damaging and which should certainly eliminate the Democrat candidate from consideration is the revelations published yesterday by International Business Times, (IBT) "Clinton Foundation Donors Got Weapons Deals From Hillary" May 26, 2015. (This last piece of news of course post dated Ms Collins Op Ed piece.)
IBT staff writers David Sirota and Andrew Prez document the fact that under Hillary Clinton the State Department approved $165 billion dollars worth of arms sales to 20 nations whose governments had given millions to the Clinton Foundation. They characterize the case of the arms deals to Saudi Arabia as: "this one was enormous." During Clinton's term, "a consortium of American defense contractors led by Boeing would deliver $29 billion worth of advanced fighter jets" to SA. The IBT authors report that, though the State Department had documented "concerns" over the sale, in late 2011 staff at State Department revealed that the deal was "a personal top priority" for Secretary of State Clinton. The author's note that it was well documented that the Saudi family had contributed at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation just prior to Hillary assuming control over the State Department and then, just two months before the jet sale deal was finalized, Boeing, the manufacturer of the planes contributed $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation. The authors delved further to discover that under Clinton's leadership the State Department approved $165 billion dollars in commercial arms sales to 20 nations the government's of which also gave money to the Clinton Foundation. An interesting and seeming incriminating fact is that during the three year tenure of Clinton at State the value of arms sales to those countries was nearly double the amount approved by the State Department during the same period of George Bush's second term.
Thus Ms Collins' "blue book" might have ended with the conclusion that our nation is faced with a terrible dilemma..on one hand a group of radical ideologues too far to the right for the mass of American voter, and a self proclaimed "populist" centrist who has so much baggage, and evidence of "soft"corruption to make the outlook for her presidency a horror of constant investigations and gridlock that she can not be seriously considered for the post.
Perhaps Ms Collins might have also asked..."how did we get our nation to such a juncture?" And how can we possibly extricate ourselves from looming political and electoral disaster?
Thursday, May 21, 2015
SUPPORT SEN. RAND PAUL
SUPPORT SENATOR PAUL-DO NOT REAUTHORIZE THE PATRIOT ACT
Senator Rand Paul (R Ky) has taken to the Senate floor to announce his intention to try and stop Congress from extending the egregious spying powers incorporated in the U.S. Patriot Act. He is planning a filibuster. The so -called "Patriot Act" is due to expire at the end of this month (May 2015). Paul is dead right in opposing it. We as a nation, our allies, and our reputation as the world's premier democracy have suffered enough as a consequence of this misguided law, passed without sufficient thought or mature oversight in the chaotic, frought days right after the September 11, 2001 attack. There is not a scintilla of proof that any of its provisions have increased our security or prevented another terrorist attack. It has served the ingrained, powerful military-industrial complex well, however, being used overseas to function as an industrial spy on our allies and others (Germany comes to mind.) I say let the entire structure collapse on the 31st.
Provisions of the law have already been undermined by an appeals-court ruling which indicated that a critical part of the Bill, Section 215, has been misinterpreted by he government. As written, it does NOT authorize the NSA to collect BULK DATA as the government does now, routinely collecting electronic information, emails, telephone calls, social security data, etc. etc. etc. on every man woman and child in the USA. WERE IT NOT FOR THE REVELATIONS OF EDWARD SNOWDON, the true patriot in this story, we would not even have know about these illegal transgressions of the law and overreach by our government. As interpreted by the present government, the NSA has no need for oversight by Congrees, a warrant, or a hint of suspicious behavior, or even a far fetched "George Bush" type reason to pry into a citizen's private life, the NSA, read BIG GOVERMENT, can listen in and collect data on everyone, then store the data secretly and indefinitely, as these faceless beureaucrats trample with impunity on our sacred Bill of Rights.
I give kudos to Senator Paul for his patriotism and courage to oppose the majority of the robots in his Party who are all marching in the same direction...over the cliff as they oppose him. All thinking Americans should stand shoulder to shoulder with Senator Paul and those few others of like mind to stop the Senate from re-authorizing this mis-named unpatriotic bill.
Senator Rand Paul (R Ky) has taken to the Senate floor to announce his intention to try and stop Congress from extending the egregious spying powers incorporated in the U.S. Patriot Act. He is planning a filibuster. The so -called "Patriot Act" is due to expire at the end of this month (May 2015). Paul is dead right in opposing it. We as a nation, our allies, and our reputation as the world's premier democracy have suffered enough as a consequence of this misguided law, passed without sufficient thought or mature oversight in the chaotic, frought days right after the September 11, 2001 attack. There is not a scintilla of proof that any of its provisions have increased our security or prevented another terrorist attack. It has served the ingrained, powerful military-industrial complex well, however, being used overseas to function as an industrial spy on our allies and others (Germany comes to mind.) I say let the entire structure collapse on the 31st.
Provisions of the law have already been undermined by an appeals-court ruling which indicated that a critical part of the Bill, Section 215, has been misinterpreted by he government. As written, it does NOT authorize the NSA to collect BULK DATA as the government does now, routinely collecting electronic information, emails, telephone calls, social security data, etc. etc. etc. on every man woman and child in the USA. WERE IT NOT FOR THE REVELATIONS OF EDWARD SNOWDON, the true patriot in this story, we would not even have know about these illegal transgressions of the law and overreach by our government. As interpreted by the present government, the NSA has no need for oversight by Congrees, a warrant, or a hint of suspicious behavior, or even a far fetched "George Bush" type reason to pry into a citizen's private life, the NSA, read BIG GOVERMENT, can listen in and collect data on everyone, then store the data secretly and indefinitely, as these faceless beureaucrats trample with impunity on our sacred Bill of Rights.
I give kudos to Senator Paul for his patriotism and courage to oppose the majority of the robots in his Party who are all marching in the same direction...over the cliff as they oppose him. All thinking Americans should stand shoulder to shoulder with Senator Paul and those few others of like mind to stop the Senate from re-authorizing this mis-named unpatriotic bill.
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
LET'S CALL OFF 2016 ELECTIONS: NO GOOD CANDIDATES
LET'S CALL OFF THE 2016 ELECTIONS: LOUSEY CHOICES ONLY DISASTER AHEAD FOR OUR NATION
The presidential election is still a year an a half off and all the people I talk to up here in the Central Greens are fearful and depressed about the coming election. The current crop of potential Presidential candidates and the need to pick a winner from this motley group have them concerned. The candidates who on the Republican side keep poping up like moles in the village green, are almost all lacking in one way or another. On the Democrat side there is only one choice (sorry to say worthy Vermoter Bernie Sanders..he is just blowing wind) she has plotted and schemed to make it that way for a long time and the poor Dems are stuck with her. But she is old, loaded with unsavory baggage and most see her as untrustworthy. Where can a voter go? One of my neighbors had a solution.
On my daily walk down the road by the brook, yesterday, I passed old man Morrisey's place. It was a warm spring day and the old guy, a retired linesman and Vietnam vet who worked for many years for Vermont Power and Light, was perched on his porch in a rocker chair. I called to him from the edge of the roadside, and he waved me in closer.
"Nice weather," I said, resting my hand on his picket fence.
"Ain't so good, that it'll change things much," replied Morrisey grumpily.
Thinking I'd stir the old mans blood circulation a bit, I asked him what he thought about the current crop of candidates getting ready to replace Obama...a man Morrisey always had plenty to complain about.
My query had its desired effect and then some. The old guy struggled up out of the wicker chair and lumbered over to the balustrade close to where I stood.
"Be best for us all if we jest called off them comin' 'lections." he said firmly.
"Call off the elections?"
"Yeah. That's right sonny. And you can tell them in your writin' that you heard it first right her from Jim Morrisey."
"I don't think that a possibility"...I began, but Jim just ignored me, as he ran on with his resoning for this radical skip-election proposal.
"All we got runnin' fer the job are a bunch of far-right kids, still damp from their momma's birthin', who are determined to take the nation back into the 1800s. They jest ain't up to the job. They ain't Presidential". Then its darn embarrassing how they're all beggin' fer bundles of cash from some of these super rich guys and makin' secret promises to these donors too. Who knows what they are givin' away? Then too the lot of 'em run off out west to bow down before that Las Vegas gambling guy and toe his line fer cash. But worse than that, that kid-Wisconsin governor, he even flew out to Israel and bow down to that Netanyahu fella. And what has that guy to do with anythin in the US of A? He ain't even an American!"
Old JM, pUsed to take a deep breath, and looked up to watch a pair of cackling ravens fly by over head.
He began again. "Then, believe it or not, we even got them Bushes in there again. Jeb Bush,he's runnin' now too. Would you belive it? Ain't he got a nerve? He's the guy, who as Florida governor at the time, schemed to give the Florida vote to his idiot brother. That was some kick in the ass for this nation. GW he got 'lected. Then gol darned he wasn't in there long when he when he started this God awful mess in the Middle East! Look what a mess that turned out to be. I read today that them ISIS fellas jest took the city of Remadi from the Iraqis. That was where my young nephew died in 2005 fightin' for no good reason. That JEB is still tight as a clam with the Bush clan. I heard it on TV that he still claims that his brother George did the right thing, invadin' Iraq, killin' half a million innocent Iraqis, sacrifin' nearly five thousand of our kids and costin' us so much we're still repayin' war loans. JEB is now claimin' his bro jest had bad info. But thing is the info was George's info...he made it all up. He made up the whole WMD story and fed it to the American people. and that's not all."
"Hold it, hold on there, JM." I hollered up to him. He was turning as red as a fresh cooked beet. I was afraid he was going to succumb to apoplexy right there on his porch. I warned him. " JM I ain't got all day here, the sun is hot! Is there an end to this story?"
"I jest gotta finish this", he insisted.
"OK, but...."
Jim ignored me again and carried on wheezing a bit. "Bud, that was only one side of the story. On the other side of the political divide in Washington, we got an old hag, who has been takin' money from another bunch of foreign types that want to get the Presidential ear. She and her man, ole "Slick Willy", claim the payouts and donations to the "Clinton Foundaton" are for good deeds and only "speaking fees". But we all know that the dough is for access to her, to power, like when she was Secretary of State. And now that she's a candidate and its a good bet that she might be President one day the powerful and wan'na bes are lining up to throw money at Bill for "speakin' fees". Hey, they cant fool me, those two."
So on the Democrat side we only have "Shillery" Clinton. The Dems just coronated her--no contest. And sure as GOD made little apples, I don't trust that one. She and her husband, if they got a chance, they would be sellin' off the Nation's treasures to the highest bidders. Liddy (my wife) she says ole lady Clinton will sell off the White House silverware if she gets in there. Oh yeah, and if she's elected, how would she control that husband of hers? He'd be sellin' access to the lady President , like a carnival ticket man, to pour money into that phony slush fund "Foundation" of his. What will they possibly do with him to keep him out of the US Treasury (and the panties of every young female in the White House)?"
Every which way I look at it this is a disaster year comin' up. I worried about the nation. My solution is to put off the election till some of them Republican kids grow up and in a year or two old lady Clinton will be dribblin' her oatmeal and be way too old to run for President."
"You finished?" I asked
"Yeah, I guess so," said JM. He appeared exhausted but happy to get that off his chest.
"But we can't wait too long" I said with a wink.
"Why?"
"Chelsea."
The presidential election is still a year an a half off and all the people I talk to up here in the Central Greens are fearful and depressed about the coming election. The current crop of potential Presidential candidates and the need to pick a winner from this motley group have them concerned. The candidates who on the Republican side keep poping up like moles in the village green, are almost all lacking in one way or another. On the Democrat side there is only one choice (sorry to say worthy Vermoter Bernie Sanders..he is just blowing wind) she has plotted and schemed to make it that way for a long time and the poor Dems are stuck with her. But she is old, loaded with unsavory baggage and most see her as untrustworthy. Where can a voter go? One of my neighbors had a solution.
On my daily walk down the road by the brook, yesterday, I passed old man Morrisey's place. It was a warm spring day and the old guy, a retired linesman and Vietnam vet who worked for many years for Vermont Power and Light, was perched on his porch in a rocker chair. I called to him from the edge of the roadside, and he waved me in closer.
"Nice weather," I said, resting my hand on his picket fence.
"Ain't so good, that it'll change things much," replied Morrisey grumpily.
Thinking I'd stir the old mans blood circulation a bit, I asked him what he thought about the current crop of candidates getting ready to replace Obama...a man Morrisey always had plenty to complain about.
My query had its desired effect and then some. The old guy struggled up out of the wicker chair and lumbered over to the balustrade close to where I stood.
"Be best for us all if we jest called off them comin' 'lections." he said firmly.
"Call off the elections?"
"Yeah. That's right sonny. And you can tell them in your writin' that you heard it first right her from Jim Morrisey."
"I don't think that a possibility"...I began, but Jim just ignored me, as he ran on with his resoning for this radical skip-election proposal.
"All we got runnin' fer the job are a bunch of far-right kids, still damp from their momma's birthin', who are determined to take the nation back into the 1800s. They jest ain't up to the job. They ain't Presidential". Then its darn embarrassing how they're all beggin' fer bundles of cash from some of these super rich guys and makin' secret promises to these donors too. Who knows what they are givin' away? Then too the lot of 'em run off out west to bow down before that Las Vegas gambling guy and toe his line fer cash. But worse than that, that kid-Wisconsin governor, he even flew out to Israel and bow down to that Netanyahu fella. And what has that guy to do with anythin in the US of A? He ain't even an American!"
Old JM, pUsed to take a deep breath, and looked up to watch a pair of cackling ravens fly by over head.
He began again. "Then, believe it or not, we even got them Bushes in there again. Jeb Bush,he's runnin' now too. Would you belive it? Ain't he got a nerve? He's the guy, who as Florida governor at the time, schemed to give the Florida vote to his idiot brother. That was some kick in the ass for this nation. GW he got 'lected. Then gol darned he wasn't in there long when he when he started this God awful mess in the Middle East! Look what a mess that turned out to be. I read today that them ISIS fellas jest took the city of Remadi from the Iraqis. That was where my young nephew died in 2005 fightin' for no good reason. That JEB is still tight as a clam with the Bush clan. I heard it on TV that he still claims that his brother George did the right thing, invadin' Iraq, killin' half a million innocent Iraqis, sacrifin' nearly five thousand of our kids and costin' us so much we're still repayin' war loans. JEB is now claimin' his bro jest had bad info. But thing is the info was George's info...he made it all up. He made up the whole WMD story and fed it to the American people. and that's not all."
"Hold it, hold on there, JM." I hollered up to him. He was turning as red as a fresh cooked beet. I was afraid he was going to succumb to apoplexy right there on his porch. I warned him. " JM I ain't got all day here, the sun is hot! Is there an end to this story?"
"I jest gotta finish this", he insisted.
"OK, but...."
Jim ignored me again and carried on wheezing a bit. "Bud, that was only one side of the story. On the other side of the political divide in Washington, we got an old hag, who has been takin' money from another bunch of foreign types that want to get the Presidential ear. She and her man, ole "Slick Willy", claim the payouts and donations to the "Clinton Foundaton" are for good deeds and only "speaking fees". But we all know that the dough is for access to her, to power, like when she was Secretary of State. And now that she's a candidate and its a good bet that she might be President one day the powerful and wan'na bes are lining up to throw money at Bill for "speakin' fees". Hey, they cant fool me, those two."
So on the Democrat side we only have "Shillery" Clinton. The Dems just coronated her--no contest. And sure as GOD made little apples, I don't trust that one. She and her husband, if they got a chance, they would be sellin' off the Nation's treasures to the highest bidders. Liddy (my wife) she says ole lady Clinton will sell off the White House silverware if she gets in there. Oh yeah, and if she's elected, how would she control that husband of hers? He'd be sellin' access to the lady President , like a carnival ticket man, to pour money into that phony slush fund "Foundation" of his. What will they possibly do with him to keep him out of the US Treasury (and the panties of every young female in the White House)?"
Every which way I look at it this is a disaster year comin' up. I worried about the nation. My solution is to put off the election till some of them Republican kids grow up and in a year or two old lady Clinton will be dribblin' her oatmeal and be way too old to run for President."
"You finished?" I asked
"Yeah, I guess so," said JM. He appeared exhausted but happy to get that off his chest.
"But we can't wait too long" I said with a wink.
"Why?"
"Chelsea."
Friday, April 10, 2015
SUPPORT OBAMA IRAN DEAL
YES TO THE IRAN TREATY
DON'T LET THE WAR HAWKS DO IT AGAIN!
A large majority of USA Democrat voters favor the President's just-revealed, framework-Iran nuclear deal. Interestingly, there is also a plurality of Republican voters who also support the deal. (This data according to a recent April 9, 2015, "the Atlantic" article by Jeff Bourdon). Yet there is little evidence of this public sentiment in the Senate. The President is faced with a great deal of opposition there. He is sweating this one out. He needs all of his Democrats to hold steady to prevent a veto override vote in the Senate, yet even stalwarts of the Party, such as Chuck Schumer are acting and sounding like Dick Cheney Republicans on this deal.
The reason? AIPAC AND ADELSON MONEY. The effect of big money from AIPAC and slush funds from one-issue billionaires released into the political system (by the Supreme Court recent Citizen's United decision) are showing clearly how the nation's elected officials are controlled (bought and sold) by big money. Our great nation is sadly in the process of morphing from a democratic republic into a South American style oligarchy, where the monied elites and powerful foreign interests control the nation's policies...not its voting citizens.
If our President's Iran nuclear deal is thwarted by the Netanyahu and Neocon crowd we can expect only WAR to follow. The Iran hawks are calling for " more sanctions" and "a better deal" but what they want and are unable to say is:"bomb bomb bomb Iran". That --regime change--is their actual goal. They have poor memories. But the American public does not. After the Iraq and Afghanistan fiascos the American people find another long term war in the Middle East a very unpalatable idea. But it is clear that is the goal of the McCain-Cotton-Graham triumvirate. With no nuclear deal, Iran would simply continue to move ahead with its nuclear enrichment and development. With the threats of bombing from Israel, and saber rattling from Washington, a constant drumbeat, while US and other sanctions imposed on its economy reach existential threat levels ....one wonders what other choices would Iran have but to attempt to build a bomb "a la North Korea". At that juncture war, either instigated or initiated by Israel or the Washington crowd would be almost inevitable. But this would be a much wider, devastating conflict unlike a"the few days of bombing" which Senator Cotton has disturbingly indicated. It would probably include China and Russia, and other nations which would clandestinely arm and support Iran. It's an ugly and fearsome prospect.
In the end as many parts of the Middle East lay smoldering again the world and the American people would know who to blame for the loss of American life, the massive costs and wide and awful devastation. They would only have to review the anti-diplomacy, saber rattling speeches of the Republican War Hawks, the sneaky invite of Speaker of the House John Boehner, and the tapes of Netanyahu's war speech to Congress. The American people will know who to blame. But at what a cost!
DON'T LET THE WAR HAWKS DO IT AGAIN!
A large majority of USA Democrat voters favor the President's just-revealed, framework-Iran nuclear deal. Interestingly, there is also a plurality of Republican voters who also support the deal. (This data according to a recent April 9, 2015, "the Atlantic" article by Jeff Bourdon). Yet there is little evidence of this public sentiment in the Senate. The President is faced with a great deal of opposition there. He is sweating this one out. He needs all of his Democrats to hold steady to prevent a veto override vote in the Senate, yet even stalwarts of the Party, such as Chuck Schumer are acting and sounding like Dick Cheney Republicans on this deal.
The reason? AIPAC AND ADELSON MONEY. The effect of big money from AIPAC and slush funds from one-issue billionaires released into the political system (by the Supreme Court recent Citizen's United decision) are showing clearly how the nation's elected officials are controlled (bought and sold) by big money. Our great nation is sadly in the process of morphing from a democratic republic into a South American style oligarchy, where the monied elites and powerful foreign interests control the nation's policies...not its voting citizens.
If our President's Iran nuclear deal is thwarted by the Netanyahu and Neocon crowd we can expect only WAR to follow. The Iran hawks are calling for " more sanctions" and "a better deal" but what they want and are unable to say is:"bomb bomb bomb Iran". That --regime change--is their actual goal. They have poor memories. But the American public does not. After the Iraq and Afghanistan fiascos the American people find another long term war in the Middle East a very unpalatable idea. But it is clear that is the goal of the McCain-Cotton-Graham triumvirate. With no nuclear deal, Iran would simply continue to move ahead with its nuclear enrichment and development. With the threats of bombing from Israel, and saber rattling from Washington, a constant drumbeat, while US and other sanctions imposed on its economy reach existential threat levels ....one wonders what other choices would Iran have but to attempt to build a bomb "a la North Korea". At that juncture war, either instigated or initiated by Israel or the Washington crowd would be almost inevitable. But this would be a much wider, devastating conflict unlike a"the few days of bombing" which Senator Cotton has disturbingly indicated. It would probably include China and Russia, and other nations which would clandestinely arm and support Iran. It's an ugly and fearsome prospect.
In the end as many parts of the Middle East lay smoldering again the world and the American people would know who to blame for the loss of American life, the massive costs and wide and awful devastation. They would only have to review the anti-diplomacy, saber rattling speeches of the Republican War Hawks, the sneaky invite of Speaker of the House John Boehner, and the tapes of Netanyahu's war speech to Congress. The American people will know who to blame. But at what a cost!
Friday, April 3, 2015
FRENCH PROSECUTE GUANTANAMO TORTURE CHIEF
GTMO TORTURE RESURFACES IN FRANCE
MILLER SHOULD NOT TAKE ALL THE BLAME
I read yesterday in the foreign press, that the French justice system may have caught up with one of the low-level perpetrators of torture at GTMO, the now infamous General Geoffery Miller.
Though somewhat of a former Francophile myself...at least up to the recent Hollande Administration, I must report that the French, the people who claim the national motto: "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" were not the first to intervene legally on behalf of their own citizen victims of US torture. That honor goes to Germany. Way back in November 2006, the Berlin government brought war crimes charges against a host of American "Iraq Era" War Criminals (see "real criminals" list below). Later in the same year, a German prosecutor brought similar charges against Geoffery Miller. And In 2011, the EU brought war crimes offenses against many of these same American defendants as well.j
Sadly, here at home American leaders have seemingly abandoned any idea of meting out justice to the perpetrators of America's most heinous crimes of the century. Also as great an embarrassment to our nation is the pallid response of the insipid American press who have reported little or nothing concerning these issues. In the USA we prefer to sweep all the ugly stuff which does not conform to our myths under the rug. AMERICA ignores its real history. It rather continue to perpetuate it's fantasies and point the finger of blame elsewhere. But we do so at our own disservice.
France Has become the most ecent claimant against American torturers. According to the French Internet site "France 24", the French court of appeals in Paris ordered a hearing this past Thursday (April 2, 2015) to adjudicate the complaints of two French citizens and former Guantanamo detainees. The two men, Mourad Benchellali, and Français, Nizar Sassi, were detained in Afghanistan, hooded, manacled and flown to Guantanamo where they were tortured during the period (November 2002 to April 2004) when General Geoffery Miller was director of the prison. See (France 24 : "Témoignage de Guantanamo : 'Je peux pas... res... p... i... rer."). According to Mssr. William Bourdon, attorney for Mssr. Benchellali , it was General Miller who was "at the heart of the policy of torture practiced at Guantanamo. He added, "If he refuses to come to the hearing he must face the consequences".
Mourad Benchellali and Français, Nizar Sassi, were arrested at different times by American forces in Afghanistan, and were then transferred from there to Guantanamo in Cuba. At Guantanamo they were subjected to all the common forms of torture you have seen and read about, threats of death to them and their families, forced nudity, threatened with a pack of snarling attack dogs, sexual humiliation, cold temperatures, denial of sleep, shackled into stress positions, water boarding, etc., etc. After a harrowing incarceration period of two years they were deemed to have no information, or were mistakenly arrested, and were quietly released. Read here: France 24 : "Rapport de la CIA : une arme judiciaire pour les ex-détenus de Guantanamo ?"
" I have been tortured, and I want those responsible brought to account. I demand reparation," stated, Mssr. Benchellali to France 24. He added, Geoffrey Miller never actually tortured him personally but that Miller was present in the prison and Benchellali can attest to having seen him passing among the cell blocks. "Of this I am certain."
Benchellali and his attorney agree that this hearing is overall symbolically useful. The former detainee sees his appeal as a very strong case which he hopes will open the halls of justice to the appeals of other victims of American torture and help bring to justice those who were responsible for the disgrace and embarrassment of America and its military forces.
In his 2006 retirement photos Miller, who hails from Ohio, looks like a bland, overworked store manager or shoe salesman. Born in 1949, he seems to have missed serving in Vietnam. He attended Ohio State where he earned a degree in history, and joined the U.S. Army in 1972 probably as a member of the Ohio State, ROTC. He trained and served in US field artillery. Not a West Point graduate so he had to work a little harder for advancement. He appears to have been assigned some of the less than desirable military posts and must have served his superiors well, eventually rising to become a senior officer and Army "management" desk man. After a mostly quiet career with little or no battlefield experience Miller somehow morphed into the epitome of the evil torturer of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. One wonders, how did he undergo such a metamorphosis?
MILLER AT GUANTANAMO
Soon after the ill-conceived and disastrous "Bush-Cheny" invasion of Iraq, Miller was assigned the command of Joint Task Force Guantanamo. That office ran the US detention system's now infamous facilities in Cuba known as Camp X-Ray, Camp Delta and Camp Echo. While there, Miller was under pressure from his superiors to "produce" information. At that time Miller claimed that 400 prisoners out of the 600 prisoners incarcerated at GTMO had "confessed" to having been involved in terrorism. we know now that these so called "confessions" were extracted by torture. Miller used that tainted criterion to subject the remaining two-thirds of the inmate population so designated to even "harsher procedures" to gain what was termed "actionable intelligence". Geoff Miller diligently tried to please his bosses. To do so, he had to go way beyond the line of what was legal, and venture outside the moral circle of acceptance of our Constitution and Amdrican culture.
According to Wikipedia's site: "General Geoffery Miller", "It was not Geoff Miller, but the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who on December 2, 2002 authorized in writing the "First Special Interrogation Plan," listing 17 techniques to be used on the detainee Mohammed al Qahtani." (Rumsfeld had help. These "interrogation plans" (torture procedures). were developed in consultation with General Miller who carried them out.) "It was later revealed that such techniques were used more widely against other prisoners as well." Wikipedia also notes that " On September 22, 2003, Miller ordered the arrest of James Yee, an Army captain who served as a chaplain for the Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo". Captain Yee courageously attempted to bring the maltreatment of the detainees to the attention of his superiors. Miller falsely accused Yee of stealing classified documents and of smuggling them out of the prison. Those charges were later dropped. No evidence of espionage or malfeasance was ever produced against Captain Yee and he was honorably discharged on January 7, 2004.
MILLER IN IRAQ
In August of 2002 legal advisor John Yoo of President Bush's Office of Legal Counsel wrote a draft memo to the CIA, known widley as the "Torture Memos" which claimed (now discredited) that existing international laws on torture were "antiquated" and did not apply to the Iraq, Guantanamo situations. Less than a year later, and five days before the invasion of Iraq (March 19, 2003), the same John Yoo issued an opinion to the Department of Defense in which legal scholar Yoo concluded (a view that is also now discredited) that federal laws related to the use of torture would NOT apply to detainees outside US borders. Most legal,observers Now believe that Yoo was writing opinions based on premises derived not from US law and legal precedent but from the questionable needs and priorities of his White House superiors.
Based on John Yoo's quasi-legal findings, the Defense Department, in August 2003, transferred General Miller, who they knew had experience in "extracting" information from Guantanamo detainees from Cuba to Iraq. Miller was tasked with developing "more productive" interrogation procedures for Iraqi prisoners. Besides dumbly following orders from Rumsfeld and others, Miller had his own insidious ideas as well. He submitted a report which recommended using the same harsh treatment (torture) methods he had employed in Guantanamo (GTMO) to Iraq. He referred this to this process as "GTMO-ising" the Iraq detainee prison system. Further, he proposed and implemented a staff utilization plan which combined two formerly separate detention and interrogation units at Abu Ghraib prison into one unit. Under this plan, the prison military police (detention) staff would be used (according to Miller) to "soften up" the prisoners for the actual interrogation process. This "plan" ultimately backfired on Miller. In a subsequent report on the Abu Ghraib scandal filed by General Antonio Taguba (2006), Taguba concluded that the degrading and brutal prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib were the direct result of Miller's use of untrained, poorly officered prison military police guards for the "softening up" interrogation purposes.
Miller was also accused of introducing the use of attack dogs to intimidate, and in some cases to maul prisoners, a procedure he had used at Guantanamo. And according to one of his Iraq-theater colleagues, General Janis Karpinski, he (miller) was quoted as advising senior prison officials "to treat detainees like dogs". Karpinski Attributes to Miller the statement: "If you permit them to think that at any point they are more than a dog then you have lost control of them." Miller denies these accusations. Though during the time Miller was commandant, several photographs released from the Abu Ghraib file do show naked, apparently screaming prisoners being threatened by snarling German Shepard dogs handled by military police.
THE REAL CRIMINALS
The case against Miller is a strong one. The Frenchman Benchellali's attorney, William Bourdon claims that Geoff Miller was "at the heart of the policy of torture" practiced at Guantanamo and at Abu Ghraib. That statement seems well justified. However, Miller was the low man on the chain of command. He was "only following orders" and attempting with little thought about right or morality to do the bidding of his just as evil superiors. In part Miller is a fall guy for more vicious and dangerous types, who remain unrepentant and unpunished. In my view the actual higher up perpetrators who set up the system with a so called legal rational for torture and abuse designed to sooth the concerns of those such as Miller (and others like him) are as morally repugnant and guilty as Miller. Those that participated in the subterfuge of creating legal cover for torture and falsity are more or equally guilty. Miller's superiors in the Defense establishment and in the White House have thrown Miller under the bus. While Miller suffers the infamy of his past...they bask in the limelight Of power, many still holding down good positions and remaininvestors mostly outside of public scrutiny and calumny. It is not fair. Justice requires more than that.
The real criminals are those who made policy, for the CIA and the Defense Department, who legally tried to justify this horrid anti-American, illegal and immoral program and gave orders to put it into motion. The truly guilty according to most accounts are: Richard Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald H. Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Stephen Cambone, Ricardo S. Sanchez, Walter Wojdakowski, Thomas M. Pappas, Barbara Fast, Marc Warren, John Yoo, William J. Haynes, II, David Addington, and Jay Bybee.
When will their day for retribution come?
And let us not forget the actual interrogators or "torture perps", yes working "under orders" of the above, but certainly guilty of horrible acts of illegal and unwarranted brutality. These faceless unknowns also must be discovered and punished. And finally, we come to those foul, complicitous so-called "professionals", I refer here to the psychologists, psychiatrists, and sadly even some physicians who abandoned their professional dignity, honor and their professional oaths to give aid, support and advice to the criminal torturers of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Your denoument and retribution also awaits.
MILLER SHOULD NOT TAKE ALL THE BLAME
I read yesterday in the foreign press, that the French justice system may have caught up with one of the low-level perpetrators of torture at GTMO, the now infamous General Geoffery Miller.
Though somewhat of a former Francophile myself...at least up to the recent Hollande Administration, I must report that the French, the people who claim the national motto: "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" were not the first to intervene legally on behalf of their own citizen victims of US torture. That honor goes to Germany. Way back in November 2006, the Berlin government brought war crimes charges against a host of American "Iraq Era" War Criminals (see "real criminals" list below). Later in the same year, a German prosecutor brought similar charges against Geoffery Miller. And In 2011, the EU brought war crimes offenses against many of these same American defendants as well.j
Sadly, here at home American leaders have seemingly abandoned any idea of meting out justice to the perpetrators of America's most heinous crimes of the century. Also as great an embarrassment to our nation is the pallid response of the insipid American press who have reported little or nothing concerning these issues. In the USA we prefer to sweep all the ugly stuff which does not conform to our myths under the rug. AMERICA ignores its real history. It rather continue to perpetuate it's fantasies and point the finger of blame elsewhere. But we do so at our own disservice.
France Has become the most ecent claimant against American torturers. According to the French Internet site "France 24", the French court of appeals in Paris ordered a hearing this past Thursday (April 2, 2015) to adjudicate the complaints of two French citizens and former Guantanamo detainees. The two men, Mourad Benchellali, and Français, Nizar Sassi, were detained in Afghanistan, hooded, manacled and flown to Guantanamo where they were tortured during the period (November 2002 to April 2004) when General Geoffery Miller was director of the prison. See (France 24 : "Témoignage de Guantanamo : 'Je peux pas... res... p... i... rer."). According to Mssr. William Bourdon, attorney for Mssr. Benchellali , it was General Miller who was "at the heart of the policy of torture practiced at Guantanamo. He added, "If he refuses to come to the hearing he must face the consequences".
Mourad Benchellali and Français, Nizar Sassi, were arrested at different times by American forces in Afghanistan, and were then transferred from there to Guantanamo in Cuba. At Guantanamo they were subjected to all the common forms of torture you have seen and read about, threats of death to them and their families, forced nudity, threatened with a pack of snarling attack dogs, sexual humiliation, cold temperatures, denial of sleep, shackled into stress positions, water boarding, etc., etc. After a harrowing incarceration period of two years they were deemed to have no information, or were mistakenly arrested, and were quietly released. Read here: France 24 : "Rapport de la CIA : une arme judiciaire pour les ex-détenus de Guantanamo ?"
" I have been tortured, and I want those responsible brought to account. I demand reparation," stated, Mssr. Benchellali to France 24. He added, Geoffrey Miller never actually tortured him personally but that Miller was present in the prison and Benchellali can attest to having seen him passing among the cell blocks. "Of this I am certain."
Benchellali and his attorney agree that this hearing is overall symbolically useful. The former detainee sees his appeal as a very strong case which he hopes will open the halls of justice to the appeals of other victims of American torture and help bring to justice those who were responsible for the disgrace and embarrassment of America and its military forces.
In his 2006 retirement photos Miller, who hails from Ohio, looks like a bland, overworked store manager or shoe salesman. Born in 1949, he seems to have missed serving in Vietnam. He attended Ohio State where he earned a degree in history, and joined the U.S. Army in 1972 probably as a member of the Ohio State, ROTC. He trained and served in US field artillery. Not a West Point graduate so he had to work a little harder for advancement. He appears to have been assigned some of the less than desirable military posts and must have served his superiors well, eventually rising to become a senior officer and Army "management" desk man. After a mostly quiet career with little or no battlefield experience Miller somehow morphed into the epitome of the evil torturer of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. One wonders, how did he undergo such a metamorphosis?
MILLER AT GUANTANAMO
Soon after the ill-conceived and disastrous "Bush-Cheny" invasion of Iraq, Miller was assigned the command of Joint Task Force Guantanamo. That office ran the US detention system's now infamous facilities in Cuba known as Camp X-Ray, Camp Delta and Camp Echo. While there, Miller was under pressure from his superiors to "produce" information. At that time Miller claimed that 400 prisoners out of the 600 prisoners incarcerated at GTMO had "confessed" to having been involved in terrorism. we know now that these so called "confessions" were extracted by torture. Miller used that tainted criterion to subject the remaining two-thirds of the inmate population so designated to even "harsher procedures" to gain what was termed "actionable intelligence". Geoff Miller diligently tried to please his bosses. To do so, he had to go way beyond the line of what was legal, and venture outside the moral circle of acceptance of our Constitution and Amdrican culture.
According to Wikipedia's site: "General Geoffery Miller", "It was not Geoff Miller, but the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who on December 2, 2002 authorized in writing the "First Special Interrogation Plan," listing 17 techniques to be used on the detainee Mohammed al Qahtani." (Rumsfeld had help. These "interrogation plans" (torture procedures). were developed in consultation with General Miller who carried them out.) "It was later revealed that such techniques were used more widely against other prisoners as well." Wikipedia also notes that " On September 22, 2003, Miller ordered the arrest of James Yee, an Army captain who served as a chaplain for the Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo". Captain Yee courageously attempted to bring the maltreatment of the detainees to the attention of his superiors. Miller falsely accused Yee of stealing classified documents and of smuggling them out of the prison. Those charges were later dropped. No evidence of espionage or malfeasance was ever produced against Captain Yee and he was honorably discharged on January 7, 2004.
MILLER IN IRAQ
In August of 2002 legal advisor John Yoo of President Bush's Office of Legal Counsel wrote a draft memo to the CIA, known widley as the "Torture Memos" which claimed (now discredited) that existing international laws on torture were "antiquated" and did not apply to the Iraq, Guantanamo situations. Less than a year later, and five days before the invasion of Iraq (March 19, 2003), the same John Yoo issued an opinion to the Department of Defense in which legal scholar Yoo concluded (a view that is also now discredited) that federal laws related to the use of torture would NOT apply to detainees outside US borders. Most legal,observers Now believe that Yoo was writing opinions based on premises derived not from US law and legal precedent but from the questionable needs and priorities of his White House superiors.
Based on John Yoo's quasi-legal findings, the Defense Department, in August 2003, transferred General Miller, who they knew had experience in "extracting" information from Guantanamo detainees from Cuba to Iraq. Miller was tasked with developing "more productive" interrogation procedures for Iraqi prisoners. Besides dumbly following orders from Rumsfeld and others, Miller had his own insidious ideas as well. He submitted a report which recommended using the same harsh treatment (torture) methods he had employed in Guantanamo (GTMO) to Iraq. He referred this to this process as "GTMO-ising" the Iraq detainee prison system. Further, he proposed and implemented a staff utilization plan which combined two formerly separate detention and interrogation units at Abu Ghraib prison into one unit. Under this plan, the prison military police (detention) staff would be used (according to Miller) to "soften up" the prisoners for the actual interrogation process. This "plan" ultimately backfired on Miller. In a subsequent report on the Abu Ghraib scandal filed by General Antonio Taguba (2006), Taguba concluded that the degrading and brutal prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib were the direct result of Miller's use of untrained, poorly officered prison military police guards for the "softening up" interrogation purposes.
Miller was also accused of introducing the use of attack dogs to intimidate, and in some cases to maul prisoners, a procedure he had used at Guantanamo. And according to one of his Iraq-theater colleagues, General Janis Karpinski, he (miller) was quoted as advising senior prison officials "to treat detainees like dogs". Karpinski Attributes to Miller the statement: "If you permit them to think that at any point they are more than a dog then you have lost control of them." Miller denies these accusations. Though during the time Miller was commandant, several photographs released from the Abu Ghraib file do show naked, apparently screaming prisoners being threatened by snarling German Shepard dogs handled by military police.
THE REAL CRIMINALS
The case against Miller is a strong one. The Frenchman Benchellali's attorney, William Bourdon claims that Geoff Miller was "at the heart of the policy of torture" practiced at Guantanamo and at Abu Ghraib. That statement seems well justified. However, Miller was the low man on the chain of command. He was "only following orders" and attempting with little thought about right or morality to do the bidding of his just as evil superiors. In part Miller is a fall guy for more vicious and dangerous types, who remain unrepentant and unpunished. In my view the actual higher up perpetrators who set up the system with a so called legal rational for torture and abuse designed to sooth the concerns of those such as Miller (and others like him) are as morally repugnant and guilty as Miller. Those that participated in the subterfuge of creating legal cover for torture and falsity are more or equally guilty. Miller's superiors in the Defense establishment and in the White House have thrown Miller under the bus. While Miller suffers the infamy of his past...they bask in the limelight Of power, many still holding down good positions and remaininvestors mostly outside of public scrutiny and calumny. It is not fair. Justice requires more than that.
The real criminals are those who made policy, for the CIA and the Defense Department, who legally tried to justify this horrid anti-American, illegal and immoral program and gave orders to put it into motion. The truly guilty according to most accounts are: Richard Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald H. Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Stephen Cambone, Ricardo S. Sanchez, Walter Wojdakowski, Thomas M. Pappas, Barbara Fast, Marc Warren, John Yoo, William J. Haynes, II, David Addington, and Jay Bybee.
When will their day for retribution come?
And let us not forget the actual interrogators or "torture perps", yes working "under orders" of the above, but certainly guilty of horrible acts of illegal and unwarranted brutality. These faceless unknowns also must be discovered and punished. And finally, we come to those foul, complicitous so-called "professionals", I refer here to the psychologists, psychiatrists, and sadly even some physicians who abandoned their professional dignity, honor and their professional oaths to give aid, support and advice to the criminal torturers of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Your denoument and retribution also awaits.
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